Dan's Writings

An excerpt from the first full draft of his new novel, “Stolen Horses”. The sun was touching the horizon as Leo and Carl topped the ridge on the way back to the house. Purples and reds shot over their heads and fanned out toward the east. 

One of the first buffalo that came to this ranch was a scrawny orphan with a crooked horn. He couldn’t have weighed over forty pounds and no one was betting that he would even survive, let alone thrive. 

I have never been to the Mission San Juan Capistrano but my mother told me about the swallows. 

The day Jill was due to arrive home from France I got a call that an old friend had just died. Tim Hjort and his family had become my friends through Jill. She and Jilian had lived beside them years ago and something had clicked the way it sometimes does. 

On this quiet, chilly, but snowless afternoon I started thinking about a part of this ranch’s life that I don’t often write about. Houseguests. We have frequently had houseguests here, and they have done a little bit of almost everything there is to do at the ranch.